


under the red sky

by andibeth82



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Identity Issues, Mixed Media, Newspapers, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Social Commentary, Social Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-16 17:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3496727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What’s the news?” she asks, biting into a banana, and Clint winces.</p><p>“You.”</p><p>[The press conference is over. The files have been leaked. Hydra has been exposed, and Captain America has disappeared. But The Black Widow is a target, and the world wants a trial.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Somehow, this kind of quickly went from "oh god, there's no way I can attempt this," to "well, I guess I'm doing this." A huge amount of thanks to **bobsessive** and **geckoholic** for beta and encouragement, and for ideas and the push I needed to take the jump.
> 
> Title from Bob Dylan. No individuals impersonated in this work (social media users or real life personalities) were harmed in the making of this fic. Vague liberties taken with the Cap 2 timeline, in that I've always assumed MCU time follows real world time, give or take a few weeks.

**PART ONE**

 

The paper arrives on the last Wednesday of April, when he steps outside of the farmhouse, bare feet slapping against a deck chilled with morning wind. He sees the headline first, the picture second, the subhead third, though later, he’ll admit that he doesn’t remember how he processed it all, because everything blends together in a rush of dizzying information that seems to overwhelm his brain, like a dam that’s just burst open.

 

 **"You Know Where To Find Me," Says Romanoff to Senate Committee**  
**_______________________________**

By **ASHLEY PARKER**

** **

###### Natasha Romanoff testifies at a Senate hearing. Bryan Denton for The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Apr. 23 -- Former S.H.I.E.L.D. employee Natasha Romanoff took to the witness stand on Thursday to represent the currently disbanded organization of S.H.I.E.L.D., on account of recent events concerning Captain America and The Winter Soldier. In an interview with Mr. Scudder, Romanoff confessed her involvement with former S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury, as well as former United States pararescue Samuel Wilson. However, she failed to explain in further detail her involvement surrounding the three helicarriers that were taken down by Captain America’s hand.

“I don’t know what there is left for me to say, I think the wreck in the middle of the Potomac made its point fairly eloquently,” Romanoff argued, before ending the meeting. Requests and calls for further interviews have since been denied.

The female agent, commonly known as Black Widow, has been a topic of high discussion after leaking classified files onto the Internet as part of a security breach to expose an apparent undercover organization by the name of HYDRA. Along with Fury, Romanoff was instrumental in the events that compromised the nation’s intelligence systems. Director Fury was killed during an attack by The Winter Soldier. It is known that

**_______________________________**

_Continued on Page A4_

 

Clint shuts the door with one foot and walks slowly back into the kitchen, absently picking up the coffee mug he’d previously filled before venturing outside. He leans against the counter, sagging into the sparse amount of frame, and the more he takes in, the more his stomach churns with a feeling not unlike what he used to get when he drank too much.

Despite the fact that he’s got his aids in, he’s so engrossed that he barely hears her enter the kitchen -- not until she opens the cupboard and slams it closed with brute force, a sound which knocks Clint out of his daze and causes him to jump so much that half of the coffee sloshes out of his cup.

Natasha quirks an eyebrow at the tan liquid dribbling down the side of his mug, at the paper still clutched in his right hand.

“What’s the news?” she asks, biting into a banana, and Clint winces.

“You.”

 

_“...that’s the weather, now let’s go to Michelle for more on the breaking news we talked about earlier.”_

_“Thank you, Tom. As you mentioned, we are standing at New Hampshire Avenue here in Washington, D.C., and as far as we know, this is the former apartment of Natasha Romanoff, otherwise known as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Black Widow. Now, we’ve had crews here since last night but you can see that there hasn’t been much activity, although a few neighbors have mentioned that it’s common for the occupant to come and go at random times.”_

[Laine Fromm, resident]

“I saw her...maybe about a week ago? I can’t remember. She came outside to feed that cat that she swears isn’t hers, and when I went to sleep, I noticed the light across the hall was still on. So I went over to knock on her door and let her know, maybe bring some food, but it looked like she was gone.”

_“Residents say that they’re not worried about if she’ll come back, and that despite her dangerous job, they always did feel safe knowing someone who worked for the government was living in the building. This is News Channel 4; Tom, back to you.”_

 

Clint finds her outside two hours after he’s done with his chores, sitting with her back against the big red barn, legs drawn up to her chest.

“Are you okay?”

“Do I look okay?” she snaps, before thinning her lips and letting the air out of her body in one loud rush. “Never mind, I don’t want to know the answer.”

Clint eases himself down on the grass next to her, noticing for the first time two snuffed out cigarette butts littering the ground. He’s known Natasha to pick up smoking exactly three times in her life: two of those times were when they needed to be undercover and one was a month after New York, when he woke up after another nightmare and found her sitting by herself on the fire escape of his apartment. He decides to take the plunge after another moment of silence.

“I already called Stark. Left a message, told him to find and pull anything that he can, however far it dates back to –- I’m guessing right after the trial, but at least we’ll know for sure and we can have a frame of reference. Or...something.”

Natasha shrugs resignedly. “What’s the point? They’ve got it all, already. Everything went out weeks ago when I blasted Hydra’s system.”

Clint shrugs. “I dunno,” he says as he stretches his legs out in a straight line, the way he used to do when he was hiding in the vents at S.H.I.E.L.D., before continuing with, “maybe we can stop this before it goes any further.”

“You act like I can just push all this back under the rug,” Natasha says sharply, lifting her head. “Do you know how much of my past is out there? How hard that’s going to be to reign in? I can’t just pretend that it doesn’t exist.”

“I’m not asking you to.” Clint stares into the distance; there’s a few cars that sputter by every now and then but mostly, it’s quiet, save for some nature sounds and their own conversations. He had chosen to keep the farm for those reasons, as more of an escape than a safe house, though he knows that’s what it’s ultimately become in the absence of anywhere else to go.

Natasha sighs again and Clint feels an acute pressure as her head drops onto his shoulder. She doesn’t move and doesn't speak, just situates herself against him, as if she needs to soak up whatever she can of his steadiness in order to keep herself grounded, in order to keep herself sane.

He lets her, because at this point, he doesn’t know what else he can do.

 

***

 

Apparently (according to the rest of the world), Natasha Romanoff is a traitor.

She’s a liar, a fraud, and a lot of other things that make Clint’s blood boil when he finally unearths the laptop from his suitcase and logs onto his personal email. Tony’s inundated his account with as much as he can find, which Clint has correctly predicted to be a lot and a little all at once.

 

 **_nighthawk**  April 23rd 2014, 05:43:24 am • 16 hours ago

 

> Just saw the Black Widow news. Holy crap. Does anyone actually believe this bitch?

#idk what to tag this as #is there a #black widow #tag? #politics #ugh        50 notes

 

 **betweenyouandme** April 23rd 2014, 10:28:46 pm • 33 minutes ago

 

> Okay, Tumblr. I don’t know why we’re debating this, but let me lay it out for you: THE BLACK WIDOW IS A MURDERER. She’s killed dozens of people. She stood by while Captain America -- HER FRIEND CAPTAIN AMERICA -- got hurt and didn’t even bother to save him. Do we have reports of her visiting him in the hospital? Nope. No one ever mentioned seeing her. Her friends almost died and she walked away without a scratch, yet she’s the one we’re supposed to feel sorry for. Yeah, I don't think so. TL;DR, THIS IS NOT A PERSON THAT DESERVES JUSTICE. I hope our system does the right thing, but she's a woman, so she'll probably get off easy.
> 
> Please spread this to alert everyone of the real story. Black Widow should not walk free. We deserve better.

#DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN AMERICA #black widow #rant        42 notes

 

Clint curls his lip in disgust and slams his hand on the table, cringing inwardly when he hears the dull reverberation that sounds too loud in the otherwise quiet house. The chances of her being asleep at this hour are probably slim anyway, but the last thing he wants is for her to come find him staring at all of this, like he’s one of the people spreading the lies about her in the first place.

He sits in silence for a few moments until it’s clear he’s going to stay alone, and picks up his computer again, forcing himself to keep scrolling as much as he can. There’s a part of him that dreads what else will be out there considering what he’s already seen, but all in all, there’s not much circulating that relates to when he knows she sent Hydra’s secrets out. A few articles in smaller trades and a few online blogs (rants which Clint suspects are intended to illicit more of a personal response than a viral one), and he shifts through the rest of the material, attachments and PDFs clouding his vision, until his eyes glaze over.

 

 **in-pursuit-of-truth** reblogged **blackwidowdefense**

 

> okay i get that people are upset and writing all this stuff about how the black widow is terrible and should die and should be locked up etc etc BUT can we just look at the facts here?? this is a woman who has spent her whole life basically undercover. so how are we to even know what is or isn’t true? because let’s just think for a minute about the people who might be able to talk about black widow who probably _actually know her_ :
> 
> nick fury -- boss, mentor, father figure, maybe?? obviously took her in, worked closely with her, probably trained her. DEAD.
> 
> captain america -- friend, teammate, partner. so they were pretty close, plus all those rumors about hooking up after battle of ny (lol schwarma.) MISSING.
> 
> hawkeye -- on-and-off again romantic partner and former teammate. basically knows her the best of anyone. MISSING.
> 
> IN SHORT most of the people that could probably talk candidly about natasha romanoff and do so truthfully are either dead or missing so really, no one has any right to talk about what they think they do or do not know. let’s just stop trying to argue about this until we have more information, ok?

#i rest my case #widowgate2014 #black widow #seriously just calm the fuck down everyone        125 notes

 

It’s past midnight when he closes his laptop on Natasha’s face, a freeze-frame of a half-smirk as she moves like a blur through the massive crowd of courtroom cameras. He ambles upstairs slowly, careful to miss the slightly dilapidated plank between the fifth and sixth step, and crawls into bed, unsurprised to find Natasha staring at him rather blankly. If he wasn’t so used to being around her, he thinks he might be more worried about her state of mind.

“I just want to sleep,” she mutters, half into her pillow, and Clint closes his own eyes as he reaches for her hand. He knows the feeling of not being able to turn your mind off better than anyone, but for as much as he’s used to Natasha not hiding her vulnerability around him, it admittedly unnerves him when she’s so open about things he knows she can otherwise handle easily.

“Look, we’re gonna get through this, okay?” He presses a kiss to her forehead and feels her nod underneath his touch, before he pulls away. “I promise.”

Natasha rolls her shoulders against the pillow, and he realizes for the first time how clear her pupils are, which means she’s more awake than he had initially thought for it being so late.

“Were you reading about me?”

Clint takes a breath, holding the air in his lungs until he feels like he's going to pass out. “A little,” he admits. “I just...I wanted to know what we were dealing with.”

“Find anything?” she asks after a long pause, her voice uncharacteristically timid, as if she’s not sure if she even wants to know. Clint shakes his head.

“No. I mean, yes.”

“Clint.” She’s sitting up now, looking at him expectantly. “ _Clint_.”

“They’re calling you a bitch and a traitor,” he says without hesitation, the words falling from his mouth before he can stop them. Natasha looks a little confused, sadness shadowing her features as she falls back onto the pillow.

“Well, that’s fair.”

“That’s _fair_?” Clint tenses as her body relaxes, a trade-off of emotions. “In what alternate universe is that considered _fair_?”

Natasha breathes quietly in the dark, and then presses her cheek back into the pillow.

“Is that all?”

Clint doesn’t know how to answer that, so he tries to choose his words carefully without lying outright. “There’s a lot,” he admits. “There’s a lot out there. And they haven’t even hit the stuff in your files yet, this is just from the press conference and what the news has spun.”

There’s silence still, and he suddenly feels helpless in the dark.

“We’ll fight this together,” he continues, struggling to fill the quiet that seems to be pressing in around them, a crushing reminder of how small they are against the rest of the world. “Like we do.” His response is compounded by the distant hum of grasshoppers from the open window and he reaches for her hand, rolling her over on her side so that he can embrace her more comfortably.

He knows she needs him to believe in the fact that they can get through this, so she can believe it herself.

 

***

 

After being partners for so many years, Clint knows a lot about Natasha.

He knows Natasha has no idea what her real hair color is, not anymore, but that she’ll tell people it’s red-blonde because that’s one of the only covers she’s adopted that she feels comfortable with making a part of herself. He knows that Natasha craves touch more than words, that she shows her love by the amount of bruises or by the gentlest connections, like when she threads her fingers through his hair after he’s gotten back from a mission and is too tired to talk. He knows that she hates the stereotype of liking tea instead of coffee, the image that had been assigned to her after a few days of a sore throat at work; he knows the world sees someone with murderous eyes incapable of love, and he knows Natasha is the furthest thing from that description.

He knows Natasha deals with her problems by not talking about them, but by aggressively attacking other things in order to keep herself mentally stable. Today, it’s yoga, and as he makes dinner, he can hear her body shifting on the floor of the creaky wood in the next room over, where she’s been holed up for almost two straight hours.

The phone rings while Clint is in the middle of cutting up vegetables, and the call goes for so long without being noticed that it almost vibrates off the chopping block. He puts down his knife and stares at the unlisted number for just a fraction of a second longer than he thinks he needs to, his finger hovering over the screen.

Maria, Sam, Sharon. Technically Fury, but Clint knows better. If the Director was going to contact either of them at this point, it wouldn’t be through something as mundane as an unlisted number in the middle of the afternoon.

“Barton.”

“Kind of a trip to be taking a run on the Potomac and come home to your friend being crucified by the media, you know what I mean?”

Clint exhales as he shoves the phone in between his ear and his shoulder, picking up the knife again.

“I take it you heard the news.”

“Nah, just got a carrier pigeon,” Sam deadpans. “How’s Nat taking it?”

Clint glances up, watching one leg extend itself off the yoga mat before it disappears back out of sight. “Like Nat does.” He squishes the device harder against his cheek and concentrates on cutting the celery stalks into minuscule slivers. “She’s upset, but not talking. She’s pissed, but not doing anything. Except yoga, I guess.”

“Huh. She worried about any of this?”

Clint frowns to himself. “I don’t know. I think she just feels like she can’t do anything, so we might as well just keep hiding out here until we figure out what the hell is going on.”

“What’s going on, says your source from Washington, is a ton of backlash against what she helped Rogers do to those helicarriers,” and Sam’s voice suddenly sounds far away, as if he’s put Clint on speaker and has wandered away from the phone to do something else. “I think they’re gonna start digging into those files soon, and if it were me, hell, if it were Rogers, I’d want to take a stand.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Rogers, he knows, hung around long enough to make sure The Winter Soldier wasn’t going to actually walk through the door of his apartment, but hasn’t contacted anyone since he officially took off.

“Come back to Washington and testify. Give the public what they want. Clear it all up, and _then_ go AWOL if you want.”

“Yeah.” Clint chews on his bottom lip, because it’s a nice idea, clean and tidy and simple, as if anything in their lives could be (had ever been) simple. “Thing is, I don’t know if she’ll go for that.”

“Go for what?” Natasha interrupts, walking into the kitchen, a towel slung over one shoulder where her bra strap is sliding down her arm. “And don’t use a knife without gloves, Clint, for heaven’s sake. You’ll hurt yourself again.”

“Geez, you really have terrible timing.” Clint straightens up and drops the phone, catching it with one hand and palming the red "end" button. He’ll apologize later. “Sam called.”

“Why?” Natasha rounds, fixes him with her best tell-me-or-I’ll-kill-you face, the one that Clint knows is definitely less threatening than it would have been about five years ago. He studies her features, a silent stand-off of emotions that he knows he’ll probably lose.

“Come on, Tash. What did you tell me after New York?”

“To stop googling yourself,” Natasha answers, breaking their gaze as she walks past him and sticks her head in the fridge. “But your name wasn’t a trending topic on Twitter.”

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees, running a hand through his hair, not wanting to ask if she’s actually confirmed that or not, because he doesn’t want to deal with the headache of looking through more unnecessary garbage from people who thought they knew the whole truth and nothing but the truth. “You got me there.”

She doesn’t answer, he notices, just keeps opening the fridge and closing it as if she’s a groove on a broken record, trying to force herself to keep moving even though everything else is telling her to hold back. Clint clears his throat.

“Sam wants you to come back to Washington and testify.”

He expects a laugh, or at least an eye roll. Instead, there’s a long pause, and Clint reads her response before she speaks, can tell what the lines around her mouth spell out without needing to ask.

“You’re not saying no.”

“I’m not saying yes, either,” Natasha concedes, sitting down. “I need time to think. Don't forget, I’d be walking into a lion’s den.”

“No different than you did every day in the S.H.I.E.L.D. bullpen,” Clint reminds her. At that, Natasha does laugh.

“The S.H.I.E.L.D. bullpen didn’t have papers in front of them that said I was responsible for the hospital fire that killed dozens of women and children, including an official’s daughter,” she responds, clipping her words. “They also didn’t have papers explaining how I killed my roommate, my mentor, and then took dozens of aliases across the border, where I posed as high-ranking members of different political parties, while adding red to my ledger.”

“Jesus, do you have to make everything a production?” Clint grumps. “Besides, whatever they have on your past, we’ve got stuff from your present, too. The Battle of New York, all the cases you've helped me with over the past few years.”

“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Natasha spreads her hands along the table, a perfect formation of long fingers that Clint knows have killed countless men and also given him some of the best pleasure of his life. “Why look at the present when you have the past? It’s much easier to focus on what someone _was_ than what someone has become. And they already have enough of that.”

Clint rubs his forehead. “Look, I get it. Okay? I’m just trying to be positive.”

“And I’m just trying to be realistic,” Natasha counters, her voice softening, the edges in her voice smoothing out. “I’d like to believe I can change their minds, Clint. That I can drive back into civilization and get on that stand and make them believe that this isn’t worth painting me like a terrible person. But I have so much working against me right now.”

She forces out what looks like a mournful smile and places a hand on his arm, before getting up to finish chopping the vegetables he’s abandoned.

 

***

 

While Natasha is in the shower that night, Clint manages to sneak a glance at his phone, scrolling through the search tag of “Black Widow” until he pulls up a myriad of tweets that seem to multiply before his eyes.

 

 **NBC News** @NBCNews • 12h  
Despite hearing, Romanoff fails to explain Potomac incident nbcnews.to./1E8fAb

 **ThinkProgress** @ThinkProgress • 12h  
Why the #BlackWidow trial could be a failure -- or a win -- for the government thkpr.gs./5038269

 **Julie Silver** @JJSilver_ • 12h  
So apparently #BlackWidow lives across the street from me...lol...bets on whether or not I should run away or take advantage of this?? I’m a fighter!!

 **Mike L** @Mike4Real • 12h  
Dunno about this whole #BlackWidow thing, but if I dump all my secrets online do I get to be famous too? #Prettyplease? #ImPoor

 

Clint glowers at the last one, angrily stabs at the touch screen, and has thrown the phone onto the bedside table by the time Natasha comes out of the shower, her skin rubbed pink from the heat and from where he suspects she’s lost herself in too much thought without realizing it.

“Remind me that we need to get some plumber out here to fix the hot water,” she says as she throws her hair into a wet bun, walking across the room. “It kept getting cold on me.” He watches as she climbs into bed, mostly naked except for underwear and a long, over-sized New York Knicks tee-shirt.

Clint shifts just enough so that she has room to breathe (year after year of being more than partners and he’s still not good at sharing a bed, but circumstances lately have led her to be a little more understanding in that respect) and she throws the covers over her legs before curling into him, her skin still warm and slightly damp in the curves of her elbows and beneath the hollow of her neck, the places where she hasn’t quite toweled off all the way. She doesn’t ask for him to hold her but he does anyway, wrapping one arm around her shoulders and stilling his body until her breathing evens out, soft beats of a pulse firm against his neck, and he thinks she might be close to something resembling sleep.

“Do you really think they’d do anything? Turn it all against me?”

Clint matches his exhale with her own, trying to figure out how to respond. “They’re government assholes,” he says finally. “The same people who kept my brother and I separated for no reason when we lost our parents, and the same people who think that Rogers deserves to be locked up. But…”

“But.”

“But you’re Natasha Romanoff.”

“So?” And Natasha’s voice is suddenly so soft, he can barely hear it.

“So, I’d say you’re the toughest person I know. And for what it’s worth, I’d never count you out.”

The sound that follows sounds more like a sob than a laugh, and he rocks into her as she sighs into him again.

“You know I’m no hero, Barton,” and it’s the last thing he hears before she falls asleep for real.

He wakes up the next morning to blinding sunlight, the thin shades thrown back and Natasha standing over him, arms crossed over her chest.

“The hell?” It takes him a moment to register the fact that she’s fully dressed, her still-damp hair curled from sleep and tumbling around the curve of her face as she leans over.

“Get up and get your coffee,” Natasha says once he’s blinked himself awake enough to feel his brain function. “And your pants.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He sits up slowly, leaning over and groping for the place he’d chucked his jeans the night before, squinting up at her. “Any particular reason you’re up before the sun, Nat? Cause you sure as hell don’t look like you’re ready to go clean the barn.”

“Yes,” she says, and as he glances at his watch he notices she doesn’t bother to correct him about the time. When he looks up again, there’s a grim smile working its way onto her face.

“We’re going back to Washington. So I can testify.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will likely be at least 3 or 4 parts when all is said and done. Comments/kudos are appreciated, find me on [tumblr](isjustprogress.tumblr.com) if you're so inclined.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He knows this about Natasha: that the last thing she wants is to feel responsible for people in her life taking on what should be her own debts and issues, even if they have a perfectly good reason for doing so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless thanks to **bobsessive** and **geckoholic** for beta and for listening to me worry, and to **spyglass** for being my real-life legal consultant on the lives of fictional characters. As usual, no individuals impersonated in this work (social media users or real life personalities) were harmed in the making of this fic.

**PART TWO**

 

 **Stark Industries** @StarkIndustries  
SI CEO Virgina Potts releases statement on #BlackWidow bit.ly/7F9kG4

 

****

 

                                                                      **FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE**                           **CONTACT:**  Stark Industries Communications

                                                                       April 27, 2014                                            212-532-4562

 

**STARK INDUSTRIES STANDS BY BLACK WIDOW, CAPTAIN AMERICA’S ACTIONS**

* * *

New York, NY -- Stark Industries CEO Virginia Potts announced today that she is standing by former CEO Tony Stark in the decision to not participate in the Black Widow trial, to be held in Washington next week. Potts also released the following statement:

“Stark Industries firmly believes that Captain America’s efforts to save our country from a massive national security attack were an act of heroism. And despite what the public has learned, we applaud Natasha Romanoff, and the part she played in these circumstances.”

As confirmed earlier, Stark will also be abstaining from the trial, stating that his reasons for doing so should be clear and uncontested.

“Black Widow is an Avenger. She fought valiantly in the Battle of New York and saved thousands of lives along with our team. Additionally, we, as a group, would have been lost without her quick thinking, which was instrumental in being able to close the alien portal before our body count could multiply further from these attacks,” Stark said. “I was once given a second chance and I do not take for granted the changes I was able to make by starting over. In that same respect, we stand by her today, and always, as we will do for any of our team members, no matter their transgressions.”

Stark Industries supports the decision of both its employees and does not plan to release further comments on the matter.

The Black Widow trial is currently set for Monday, May 1st at 10 a.m.

 

Natasha finishes scrolling through the attachment on Clint’s phone and puts the device between her legs, reaching for her coffee cup as he slows the car just enough so that he can dump a handful of change into the toll booth.

“Remind me again how we’re going to do this,” she says as she swallows down the slightly stale caffeine; they had decided to play it safe by splitting the driving time and road tripping back to D.C. instead of flying, had opted out of Tony’s private jet suggestion for the same reason. Clint assumed what she assumed: that it would be easier to sneak back into town with no one looking in the usual places where they would be prone to trying to catch a high profile target.

“Do what?” Clint takes his eyes off the road long enough to stare sideways and Natasha puts her sweatpants-clad legs up on the dash.

“Win a trial with barely any witnesses and all evidence against me, for one. And get through this entire process without a picture of me behind bars ending up as front page news, for another.”

Clint’s hands tighten around the steering wheel as she finishes talking. “Sam’s agreed to speak, so you have at least one person on the stand. And that press release should hopefully take some of the attention away, for a little bit.”

“Tony Stark putting the reputation of his company on the line to take the fall for me.” Natasha smiles bitterly. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

“You and me both.” Clint switches lanes as a large truck pulls in front of him. “Give him an opportunity to run his mouth, though, and I bet he can keep the press going for days. Might work in your favor more than you think.” One hand creeps over the cup holders that split the space between them, fingers flexing.

“As for you, remember what I told you before we left?”

“You’re betting on me?”

“One hundred and ten percent, Nat.”

Natasha can’t return home and Steve’s old building is out because of the potential public eye issue, so Clint books them in a fancy hotel in Maryland under old aliases that he’s pulled from his early S.H.I.E.L.D. days, names that likely no one would find suspicious. It’s not until they’re safely ensconced in a large suite on the 18th floor that he feels himself relax, watching the way Natasha changes out of her travel clothes, closing the bathroom door softly behind her. He strips down to his boxers and then sprawls out on the bed, his ears ringing with the soft soundtrack of the hum of the air conditioning and outside street traffic, before rolling over and grabbing the remote.

Clint stops with one finger over the power button, his forehead creasing over the thoughts that he hasn’t been able to settle. It wasn’t fair that Natasha was being crucified for a life she didn’t ask for, a life that she spent years attempting to change, a reformation she had undergone that made Clint prouder than he had ever been in his whole life. It wasn’t fair that she was being branded for things that she couldn’t control, and called out for crimes she hadn’t committed in years, if probably ever, knowing how much the press liked to blow things up. She didn’t deserve it.

And that’s what bothers him the most.

He can faintly hear the rush of water being run through the pipes and hurls the remote over the bedcovers, sliding off the mattress.

Not like it was worth it to watch the news anymore, anyway. It was all just a bunch of fucking trash.

 

_“Mr. Stark, can you tell me some of your experiences with the Black Widow?”_

_“I’ll tell you anything you want to know if you ask me specifically, sure.”_

_“Well, first of all, it seems from her outfit that she’s more of a sexy fashion model than a superhero.”_

_“You know, I don’t think she should be called sexy. I mean, if anyone’s going to call her sexy, it would be me, but I’d probably get punched in the face.”_

_“So, you’re saying that she_ does _have the dark past that people have been talking about?”_

_“I have a dark past. We all have dark pasts, right? It doesn’t make sense to single her out when she’s no different than anyone else.”_

_“Yes, but to be frank, Mr. Stark, she willingly assisted in interfering with our national intelligence system. While endangering thousands of lives. She committed a crime.”_

_“What I find_ implausible _to believe is that the press is so fixated on making her out to be the bad guy that they’re completely bypassing the notion that maybe there’s more to her than they want to talk about. I mean, does anyone want to talk about my alcoholism? I guess not, because I saved the world, but that seems to be okay. My dad wasn’t so great, either, but he made a ton of weapons and no one complained about him. I’m sorry, you look shocked; did I say something to upset you? I tend to do that sometimes: I make the media uncomfortable.”_

_“Mr. Stark, we’re just trying to --”_

 

“I can’t believe Tony went on CNN.”

“I can,” Sam says from across the room. He’d arrived a few hours earlier in a nondescript rental that he’d parked in the lot of the strip mall next door, and snuck upstairs via the back door by the lobby gym.

“Tony Stark: superhero, weapons monger, and surprisingly good candidate for the face of a political crisis,” Clint says dryly. “At least he’s being honest.”

“He doesn’t have someone to reign him in or write his words,” Natasha mutters, speaking for the first time since Clint’s turned off the TV. She’d been silent next to him through most of the broadcast, though Clint hadn’t missed the way her fingernails had dug small crescent shaped scars into her arm while she watched. “If you ever get bored, feel free to google the Senate trial from 2010. It’s a riot.”

“No, thanks,” Clint says, making a face and pushing the laptop away. “I think I’ve had enough bad news coverage for the day.” He leans back against the bed frame, glancing over at Sam, who has taken to spinning an empty Heineken bottle between his fingers. “You want another beer?”

“Nah.” Sam lets the bottle fall to the floor, and angling himself up from where he’s been sitting. “Got an early morning at the VA tomorrow before I start prepping for this thing.”

Clint looks at Natasha, who transfers her gaze to the covers while carefully taking another slice of pizza from the box on the bed.

“You okay with doing this?”

“Okay with defending the person who helped save my life?” Sam raises an eyebrow. “Piece of cake.”

“Not what he meant,” Natasha interjects, and Clint sees the look in her eyes as she fixates on Sam’s face. He knows this about Natasha: that the last thing she wants is to feel responsible for people in her life taking on what should be her own debts and issues, even if they have a perfectly good reason for doing so. It’s part of why Clint’s agreed not to take part in the trial at all, though that was also a discussion that had been tabled almost as quickly as it had been brought up, before they even left the farm.

“Okay,” Sam clarifies after a moment, crossing his arms. “Then I don’t mind putting myself out there, even if people piss on me. Consider it the least I can do.” He pauses. “That better?”

Natasha seems to accept that answer, at least, Clint can tell from the way her expression changes, and Sam uses the silence to grab his jacket from the chair.

“Sure you don’t wanna stay and have a slumber party with a criminal and an unemployed carnie?” Clint tosses forward a set of keys, which Sam catches in one hand.

“Hey, I got my own slumber party waiting for me. It’s called my bed and the next chapter of _Harry Potter_.” The corners of his lips turn up in a knowing smirk. “But thanks for the invitation.”

 

***

 

He’s in stretched out over the pillows and in the middle of _The Goldfinch_ (Natasha’s choice of literature; she had picked it up from an airport last month and shoved it into his hands when they reunited, insisting he read it) when his phone beeps urgently. The sound causes Clint to tear his gaze from the pages; she’s already been gone for at least an hour, having taken the car to pick up some light groceries, to make up for all the take-out they’ve procured over the past few days. He doesn’t expect her to call for a number of reasons, the least of which being that they have other ways of communicating, and Clint had been hesitant to let her out of his sight at all until she insisted that she knew how to avoid the public if she really wanted to.

(He hadn’t bothered to argue with her on that.)

 

 **Tony Stark**           _2 min ago_

_Turn on channel 12._

 

Confused, Clint reaches for the remote, flooding the room with sound for the first time in over 24 hours.

_“Join us tonight at 10, as Fox News takes a special look into the upcoming Black Widow trial, with new evidence from S.H.I.E.L.D.’s recently leaked files. Here’s a preview for you now; we’ll see you all later.”_

Clint stares at the television while an overexcited blonde pops into the frame, narrating the _hard, sad tale_ of Natasha Romanoff’s life. Born in an orphanage. Sold to a place that treated her like a slave, but somehow, she managed to escape and become the greatest con artist of all time. _A lonely girl that the world would come to know as a sex symbol in a cat suit, who would later become a liability to the country that she made everyone believe she was protecting._ Clint gets up slowly, as if drawn to the images popping up onscreen, myriads of snapshots that Clint recognizes from the first time he thoroughly looked through her files. She had been locked in a hospital room, then -- untrustworthy and solitary, but more than anything, scared, and he had felt the weight of the world on his shoulders as he struggled to find a thread that he could use to connect them, while at the same time knowing he was looking into her past in a more intimate way than anyone ever had.

The personal violation enrages him, the words of the anchor (a _hard, sad life_ ) soaking into his brain and by the time the segment finally cuts to a furniture commercial, the tension is spreading through his body like fire, inching down his veins and making him shake. He angrily throws the remote at the TV stand and it hits one of the stray glasses he’s left on the table, sending it careening to the floor in a shower of crystal shards.

“Clint?”

He spins around. Natasha’s standing in the open doorway with two large bags; she’s removed the oversized green sunglasses she’d gone out with earlier as well as the brown wig, and is looking at him with something close to concern.

“They said you’re a whore.” He shifts his weight, ignoring the sting as his foot closes over a piece of stray glass, and he can feel the blood pooling around his heel but refuses to move again. “A sex symbol. A violation.”

Natasha swallows and takes a few steps closer, as if she’s testing out how close she can get while he’s still tense. “We’ve been over this. You know I’ve been called worse.”

Clint balls his hands into fists. “So what?” He resists the urge to shout, the last thing he needs is to draw attention to them when they’ve tried so hard to do everything to keep themselves on the down-low. Natasha sighs, clearly frustrated.

“So, as shitty as it is, none of this is new to me. You don’t have to get angry on my behalf.”

“Well, I am!” Clint bursts out. “These fucking news outlets, they’re leaking all your personal things to the public; they’re taking everything about you and about me and putting it out there like they know you. Calling you these stupid names; talking about you like they were there for all of it, when they have _no right_...they have no right.” He feels himself breaking, the parts he’s been trying to keep together for her sake coming loose at the frayed edges, his resolve crumbling as the anchor’s voice replays itself in his mind. There's a part of his mind that wonders what was said about _him_ once upon a time, that if this was what they could do with actual evidence, there had to be worse things that could’ve been said for a man who acted under the influence.

Natasha moves just an inch closer, carefully avoiding the messy floor despite the fact that she’s still wearing her boots, and then closes one hand around his bicep. He does move, then, stumbling slightly as the pain from his injury sends flames into the nerve endings of his feet.

She catches him gently, her fingers curling into his shirt as she sinks back onto the bed, allowing him to melt heavily against her body.

“I chose this,” she says, and her voice is calm, not patronizing and not annoyed. “I deliberately made the decision to do something that would probably backfire in this way. It was free will, Clint.”

“Is that supposed to make it easier?”

“No,” Natasha confirms sadly. “You weren’t there. I don’t expect you to know what happened and why I made the choices I did.” He feels her breathing slow as she matches it to his own. “But I do expect you to trust that I can handle this, however much of a shitstorm it becomes.”

“But they’re pinning it all on you,” he continues, because there’s a part of him that feels compelled to keep pushing at the conversation, like he’s trying to deliberately invoke an otherwise tame animal. “You weren’t even the one who took those helicarriers down, Nat. There were other people involved. Why aren’t _they_ getting their asses handed to them?”

“You know exactly why,” Natasha says a little shortly. “Stark won’t let Maria testify now that she’s working for them, nor would I want her to put herself out like that.” She stops, and he can see her composing herself. “Rogers is gone, and as far as the public is concerned, he’s a national goddamn hero. It’s _my_ stuff that’s out there. It’s _my_ stuff that they’re finding fault with.”

Clint closes his eyes, pressing the side of his face into her shoulder. “I can testify,” he says finally, quietly. “I can get up there and talk about stuff. I’m not…” He hates that he has to pause, as if he’s worried his emotions will give him away. “I’m not afraid of them.”

“Clint. Of course you’re not.” She draws back so that their gazes can meet. “But the answer is still no. You’re not going on that stand.”

“Because this is your own fight?” he asks, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice, even though he knows it’s not warranted. Natasha clenches her teeth.

“Because I’m not putting you through this unnecessarily,” she responds, and he can feel her ribs tensing. “Because I can’t have you spreading yourself thin to defend me for the hell of it, when I need you to be the one person who was far enough removed from all of this to ground me.”

 _Because I need you to be there for me in a way that I can’t ask anyone else to be_ is what she really means, but he knows she’d never say that out loud and also that she doesn’t need to. Their shorthand goes beyond hand motions in the field and nonverbal gazes during meetings; there are a lot of times that Clint finds himself wondering if they even need to talk at all.

“I’m sorry,” he says when he feels like he can say it without sounding pathetic, when he’s sure he’s bled straight through the expensive carpet of the suite, when she’s stopped running her fingers over his forehead and has started using her mouth instead. It’s an apology for himself, for her, for every shitty hand she’s been dealt, and how many times, he wonders, has she told him not to blame himself for his actions? How many times has she told other people that it would be okay, when no one was ever around to tell her it would be okay? When did _she_ get a break from being the one holding the world up, so that someone could hold it up for her?

Natasha gently moves her hands to his ears, removing the tiny aids with careful ease until there’s nothing running through his brain but silence, and puts her palms on the side of his face as she forces him to read her lips.

_I know._

 

***

 

Clint can’t sleep.

He hasn’t taken pills since a few months after Loki, but does so anyway when Natasha’s not looking and pulls the covers over his eyes, trying to get his mind and his stomach to cooperate enough to let him rest. He feels himself nod off once or twice but overall it’s a failed experiment and he tosses and turns until he’s sure Natasha’s going to kick him out of bed, and he realizes he doesn’t even know how _she’s_ sleeping if he’s this on edge.

(He finds his answer when he turns over, noticing the dent in the pillow and a sports bra sitting askew on the covers.)

Clint gives up entirely once his watch hits five, and he’s pouring bottled water into the room’s coffee maker when he hears the door open quietly behind him.

“Thought you ran away,” he says conversationally as he turns around, knowing she won’t ask why he’s awake.

“Went to the gym,” Natasha says and her face is alert but her voice sounds tired. “Did you know that it’s open 24 hours?”

“I do now.” Clint hands her the coffee he’s just made and she takes it slowly, tucking a stray hair behind her ear.

“Anyway, I figured if any asshole reporter found us and wanted to take my picture on the treadmill at dawn, at least I’d start off the trial on a truthful note. I do punch people who say I look sexy.” She stretches her mouth with what looks like a forced grin, as if her face is straining to keep up a facade that her mind can’t.

“Maybe you should wear all black,” Clint says when he finally finds his voice, taking a sip of coffee. “It’ll help sell the bitch vibe better.”

Natasha laughs, and he thinks it’s close to the first time she’s made a genuine amused sound in days, which in turn makes him feel a little lighter. If they could joke about this, maybe he could pretend this whole thing wasn’t as serious as it seemed to be.

Clint purposely keeps the news off as they shower and dress, their actions mostly completed in silence save for breaks in conversation when they need to ask each other questions. Sam texts at five minutes before eight; he’ll meet them at the Dunkin’ Donuts on the corner a few block away.

“And he’ll have coffee,” Natasha confirms as she puts down the phone, bending to meet the height of the mirror. “Well, more coffee.” Her voice is light, but there’s a clear break underneath the words and Clint pauses, looking up from the suit he’s been ironing.

“What’s wrong?” Because he knows something is, despite the fact she’s been moving and talking with the same smoothness he’s always known her to carry.

Natasha pauses with one hand on an earring. “It’s just…” She swallows. "The files that went out, when I took down Hydra.”

“Yeah.” Clint drops his gaze and starts to iron again, a measure of giving her space in the quietest way.

“Pierce asked me if I was ready. For the world to see me like this.”

“Were you?” He knows what she’d told him; he’d know even if she didn’t tell him everything that happened at the Triskellion. Natasha shakes her head, securing the earring and dropping her hands.

“No.”

 

 **America Chavez** @INTERGALACTICPLANETARY • 1h  
Nerves. Nerves. Nerves. Someone tell me it’ll be okay.

 **Kate Bishop** @KateBishop • 1h  
@INTERGALACTICPLANETARY It’s gonna be okay. Out of target practice in a few -- want me to bring you coffee?? Starbucks??

 **America Chavez** @INTERGALACTICPLANETARY • 1h  
@KateBishop Oh god yes please. Got the TV on and I’m going to eat my way through all the food in the kitchen if you don’t get here soon, I’m serious.

 **Billy Kaplan** @BILLYKAPLAN666 • 1h  
@INTERGALACTICPLANETARY @KateBishop WAIT Teddy and I are coming. Small hold-up. DON’T START WITHOUT US.

 **Kate Bishop**  @KateBishop • 1h  
@INTERGALACTICPLANETARY @BILLYKAPLAN666 That’s what DVR rewind is for, dummy.

 **America Chavez** and **Kate Bishop** favorited some tweets you were mentioned in

_2m: WAIT Teddy and I are coming. Small hold-up. DON’T START WITHOUT US.                 2m_

_1m: That’s what DVR rewind is for, dummy._

 

Sam’s got two large coffees and an almost full box of munchkin holes that he hands over when Clint finally pulls the car into the lot. Natasha gives him a look.

“I’m going on trial, Wilson; I’m not on death row having my last supper.”

“Hey, donuts for breakfast should be appreciated at all times of the day,” Sam responds as he pops a piece of glaze-covered dough into his mouth. “Besides, not like they feed you at these things. You could end up on that stand for hours.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t take that long,” Clint says flatly as they make their way towards Sam’s car. Natasha had felt better arriving in a vehicle that would be less susceptible to people trailing it; if people wanted to find her, they could follow Sam to his own place and he could give them a piece of his mind.

The soundtrack of their ride to the courthouse is the faint strain of Sam’s affinity for old school rock and roll and the occasional cursing over morning rush hour traffic, coupled with Clint slurping on his coffee too loudly; once or twice, he brushes Natasha’s hand as she reaches for a donut, fingers slippery and sticky with chocolate powder and nervous sweat.

“When was the last time I saw you so dressed up?” Clint asks when they’ve parked and are getting out of the car. He tries to keep his voice conversational as Natasha smooths down her clothes, stretching her legs. She looks up at him, scrunching one overly make-upped eye shut, and reaches up to straighten the shoulders of his suit jacket.

“The Longwood Gala,” she says finally, and he can see the question relaxing her as she concentrates on a stubborn wrinkle on his lapel, her mind no doubt shifting from where it’s been ruminating over one thought for the past hour. “The last mission we had together before we were split up.” She pauses, moving her tongue inside her cheek. “You ruined my gown.”

“Yeah, but consider yourself lucky,” Clint says, falling into step beside her as they start to walk. “If that arrow hadn’t snagged it, you would’ve been over the edge of the balcony with a dozen broken bones, laid up for weeks, and you would’ve been _really_ pissed.”

“You still ruined my gown,” but there’s a small smile now, and he feels an ache in his chest as he realizes how much he wants to put his hand on the small of her back the way he normally would. He curls his fingers to quell the urge; it hurts that they have so many quiet ways of being intimate and yet none of them can be displayed here, in a space where anyone could take a meaningful moment and turn it into something that would make Clint never want to think about doing it ever again.

They’re about a yard away from the courthouse when Clint notices the familiar stance of a man standing by the steps: a lanky, muscular body hidden inside a dark blue suit but one that he would know anywhere, especially after hours of fighting side by side. He squints a little more into the distance and then uses one shoulder to nudge Natasha, whose eyes go wide.

She breaks from Clint’s hand and starts walking faster across the parking lot, and Clint hurries behind her until he confirms with an unconscious sigh of relief that it is actually Steve Rogers standing there, and not some strange impostor or figment of his imagination. Natasha reaches him first and stops in front of him, shaking her head. Clint knows in any other situation, she probably would have shown a little more emotion, hugged him, even, especially after all they’d been through. But this was still a place carefully controlled by people who could capture her every move and upload it to a place where it could go viral in hours.

And if _he_ was worried about someone taking their private moments and exploiting them, the last thing he needed was for the world to be fed more of “Natasha Romanoff’s secret love affair.”

“I don’t understand.” Natasha creases her brow. “What are you doing here?”

Steve grins. “You really thought we were going to let the government get away with prosecuting _you_ and not us?”

“I didn’t…” Natasha swivels her gaze between Sam and Steve. “This is going to throw everyone off. No one expects you to show up here.”

“Which means when we walk into that courtroom together, there’s gonna be a whole bunch of headlines about Captain America, and hopefully not as many about Black Widow,” Sam confirms. Clint watches Natasha’s face slowly, the way her expression changes as the realization dawns on her.

“But why?”

Steve shrugs, glances at Sam (who grins) and Clint (who nods) and shoves his hands in his pocket.

“I owe you. And I may be 95, but I couldn’t leave my partner behind.”

 

***

 

“Please rise and state your name for the court.”

“Natalia Alianovna Romanova.”

“Do you confirm that you also go by the name Natasha Romanoff and the codename Black Widow?”

“Yes.”

“And do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

“I do.”

 

“Captain Rogers, you claimed responsibility for destroying our intelligence systems. Why did you not appear in court to talk about your reasons for doing so when you were initially asked to?”

“Because I was lying in a hospital bed after falling at least ten feet and being brutally beaten. It’s a long recovery period, even for me.  If you’d like to check my medical records, I’m sure that can be arranged.”

“And Captain, did Miss Romanoff ever tell you her intentions of leaking those files?”

“I can’t say that she did, Your Honor. We worked for S.H.I.E.L.D.. We trusted the people who gave us orders.”

“Did you know of her past when she was helping you with these crimes?”

“Of course. But those crimes weren’t any worse than the people I killed when I fought in the war, even though they were on a different side. We both acted in ways that we never expected to answer for.”

“And what is your reasoning for that?”

“Because at the time, we were focused on doing what was right for our friends. For our country. For the people who believed in us.”

 

“You were with Captain Rogers helping to take down the helicarriers.”

“I was.”

“Can you explain how Miss Romanoff forced you to join her crusade?”

“She didn’t force me. I chose to get involved after getting to know Captain Rogers. They needed my help, and I was happy to get back in the game.”

“So then you can admit that you willingly decided to help both Miss Romanoff and Captain Rogers despite the fact that you knew the possible consequences of your actions?”

“Yes. And I’ve served my country before; I know what that sacrifice feels like. There was nothing Natasha Romanoff did that made me act differently.”

 

“Miss Romanoff, is it true you have used multiple aliases for the purpose of conducting homicide internationally?”

“Yes.”

“Is it _also_ true that you helped Captain Rogers commit treason under your own name, while affiliated with S.H.I.E.L.D., as instructed under the orders of Nick Fury?”

“Yes.”

“And were you involved in the assassination of General Marcos Van Baron in Stalingrad in 1992, before you deflected to the United States?”

“Yes.”

 

 **G. Frymer** @GGFrymer • 3h  
What the hell does this woman think she’s doing!? Dude you’re a secret assassin. Just lie! #WidowGate2014

 **Suzanne Dappelwell** @BetterOffBlonde • 3h  
Yelena Belova, Laura Mathers, Natasha Romanoff...lol forget the spy thing, this woman is schizophrenic! #WidowGate2014

 **Harper B. Lin** @harperinlove • 3h  
Well dammit. I go to class for three hours and #WidowGate2014 files have leaked. Seriously wtf, why am I always the last to know these things?!?

 **I WANT TO BE THE NEXT AVENGER** @KimKim91 • 3h  
Um. Sorry for the superficial live tweet sidebar, but this Sam Wilson guy is kind of hot. #WidowGate2014

 

Clint leans against the tile wall in the men’s room, pushing air through his lungs and reveling in the silence that he knows won’t last much longer than it already has. He had excused himself when the witness stand started to cross-examine Rogers, trying his best to slip away without causing too much notice, though he instinctively knows he hasn’t been successful.

He hears the thud of the door as it swings open and straightens up, trying to pull himself together enough to look presentable, relaxing again when Sam’s face comes into view.

“Guess I shouldn’t have brought breakfast after all, huh?”

Clint manages a smile. “If Nat knew I was this freaked out, she’d kill me.”

“You think she doesn’t know already?” Sam gives him a look. “She’s done nothing but watch you the whole time she’s been up there, and you better believe she knew exactly where you were going when you left. I’d be surprised she hasn’t texted you, but I think they took her phone away.”

Clint sighs. “I don’t know how she does it,” he admits, moving to the sink and running his hands underneath scalding water. “She can read shit about herself and stand up there while they crucify her, and she’ll want to scream about it...maybe later she’ll let herself be angry, but she can take it all fine.” He reaches for a paper towel, dragging it across his mouth. “Meanwhile, I’m throwing up in the bathroom like a fucking teenager before a middle school dance.” He grimaces at his own words. “I can support her with everything I’ve got, but she’s better at this stuff than I’ll ever be.”

Sam lets the silence take over. “You know when she was bleeding out in that van, she was telling Rogers not to beat himself up over the Winter Soldier thing? She was the one giving the pep talk, and I thought she was going to die.”

“Yeah.” Clint chuckles dryly. “Yeah, that sounds like Nat.”

“Look,” and Sam suddenly sounds like he’s trying to keep his frustration down, “what I’m trying to say is that maybe she’s got a bit of a martyr thing going on, but maybe she’s just confident about the fact that she’s got something these idiots will never take away, no matter how much they try to spin the truth and destroy her life.”

“Mmmm.” Clint chucks the paper towel into the wastebasket, a near-perfect arc. “What’s that?”

Sam smiles and gestures loosely.

“You.”

 

 _“We interrupt this broadcast to bring you breaking news out of Washington. The trial of Black Widow has been completed and the jury has released a verdict of_ not guilty _. Now, from what we’re hearing, this is only clearing charges against Romanoff for her involvement in the helicarrier incident, though there are rumors that this will extend to all charges that she is facing at this time. Stay tuned to ABC News, we’ll have the latest at 11.”_

 **NBC News** @NBCNews • 16h  
BREAKING -- Black Widow cleared of charges. Story developing. nbcnews.to./5dgRP9r

 **CNN** @CNN • 16h  
Black Widow not guilty, Captain America testifies cnn.it/8hKLqsa

 **America Chavez** @INTERGALACTICPLANETARY • 16h  
YES. YES YES YES. YES. (cc: @KateBishop @BILLYKAPLAN666)

 **Kate Bishop** and **Billy Kaplan** favorited your Tweet                               _4m_  
3m:  YES. YES YES YES. YES. (cc: @KateBishop @BILLYKAPLAN666)

 

They leave the courthouse under a barrage of cameras and microphones, and Natasha smoothly pushes through the crowds for the second time in under three months like she’s a pro at figuring out how to keep the public out of her life (Clint knows she is.) He flanks one side of her and Steve flanks the other, his wide body keeping most of the reporters at bay until they can get close enough to the car Sam’s pulled around, and have shut the doors on the faces and notepads and phones.

“What if they want another trial?” Clint asks, voicing the worry that’s been picking at the edge of his brain since the jury announcement. He stares out the window at the dizzying spin of colors as Sam speeds away.

“Can’t have one.” Steve twists in his seat, talking louder over the roar of the engine. “It’s technically not allowed. There’s a law that forbids the defendant from being tried again on the same or even similar charges.”

Clint lets out a breath he hasn’t realized he’s been holding. “So...it’s over, then?”

“It’s never over, Barton.” Natasha leans against him in the backseat. “But the jury finding me not guilty because of the fact that I apparently saved the lives of millions of people kind of helps.”

“I still don’t get it,” Clint mutters as Sam jerks the wheel. “They pick on you for your past. They blame you for everything. They say you betrayed your country, and then all of a sudden they decide, thanks to some focus group of people, that because you were a messiah for half the population, you’re off the hook?”

“Speaking from experience, you can make almost anything work as a reason to find someone not guilty,” Sam says a little too conversationally. “Government knew exactly what the real story was, and probably backpedaled.”

“About freaking time,” Steve mutters and Clint zones out of the conversation as he feels the change in Natasha’s bones, the tension draining in a way that seems to become even more pronounced when he wraps an arm around her. The sigh that escapes her lips barely passes the test of his aids but he hears it and grips her tighter, running his hands over the lining of her smooth black dress.

In this car, she is no longer Natalia, and she is not Black Widow, defending her crimes. She is Natasha, she is his partner, and there is no more public to appease or rumors to pretend she doesn’t care about.

“Wilson, turn the damn music up. This is my victory ride.”

Something breaks inside Clint’s chest, a feeling that’s been bottled up for longer than he can remember, afraid to be uncorked, and he laughs loudly and presses his face into her hair as they merge onto the highway, heading out of D.C. towards New York. Sam turns up the volume on the oldies station a little higher and Steve drums his fingers against the dashboard in a perfunctory rhythm that makes Clint wonder if Captain America ever played percussion, and when Clint feels like they’ve put enough of a distance between the past and the future, he steals a kiss that feels like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to have real fun making up fake Young Avengers twitter names before I realized Gillen and McKelvie had already done the job for me. Thank you to everyone who has left feedback so far! There will be one last part of this to be added shortly. :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _We call Hydra out as something that grew under the surface without anyone knowing. And as many will soon learn, the Black Widow program did the same thing._ \-- from "Seeing Red: The Truth Behind The Red Room," by Tom Lutz (New York Times Opinion, May 2014)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per usual, no actual beings impersonated in this fic were harmed.

**PART THREE**

 

 **The New York Times** retweeted  
**NYT Opinion** @nytopinion • 20m

What We Can Learn From The Black Widow Trial: A Study In Identity and Espionage nyti.mes/4DXkPMF

 

**Seeing Red: The Truth Behind The Red Room**

  

##### By TOM LUTZ      May 15, 2014

 

 

 

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#####                                                                                       Getty Images

In the 1940’s, much of the United States was captivated by the untimely death of Captain America, the star-spangled hero who sacrificed his life for his country. But in Stalingrad, Russia, there was another evil taking shape -- one seemingly incomparable to the Red Skull’s massacre, and one that went largely unnoticed by the general public: the Black Widow Program.

Until now, not much has been known about this undercover operation that festered in the darkest parts of the world, prominently churning out deadly killers with the use of unconventional methods such as brainwashing and torture. But in light of new information that’s been released, following a so-called “dump” of previously confidential files belonging to the organization formerly known as S.H.I.E.L.D., we can finally start to peel back the layers on something so despicable, it was hidden from society like a secret weapon.

We call Hydra out as something that grew under the surface without anyone knowing. And as many will soon learn, the Black Widow program did the same thing.

 

 

“I didn’t know trials meant this much to you,” Natasha says when they’re back at Stark Tower, and they’ve showered and eaten and changed enough to feel normal again. She’s dressed in one of Pepper’s sweatshirts and she’s clutching a whisky sour and she’s got her legs up on Clint’s lap; Steve sits across from them in an armchair and takes a healthy swig of beer.

“For what it’s worth, I do try to avoid all instances of public media. But I couldn’t let this one go.”

Natasha smiles faintly. “Well, I appreciate it.” She swirls her drink in one hand. “I owe you.”

“Nah.” He gives Natasha a wink as she leans over and passes her drink to Clint. “So where are you guys going now? Back to the farm?”

Clint hesitates, catching Natasha’s eye. “We’re currently trying to figure that out.”

“Ah.” Steve nods, as if he understands everything Clint didn’t say in his response. “So not staying in D.C., either.”

“Or New York,” Natasha corroborates. “Though that would probably be the easiest, with blending in and all. Maybe at some point, we’ll come back.”

“Yeah.”  Steve shrugs, offering a smile that Clint thinks seems a little too forced. “It’ll die down. It always does. The news, they get sick of you after awhile; they find something new and shiny to fixate on. Soon, you’re just a blip on the radar when you do something drastic and by then they’re over it. Hell, give it a few years, and who knows. Maybe there’ll be killer robots.”

“Killer robots,” Natasha mutters as Clint passes her drink back. She downs the rest of the alcohol, tapping manicured nails against the glass. “Wouldn’t that be nice.”

 

***

 

Tony calls for a celebratory dinner, which is really just Pepper ordering a lot of expensive take-out and Sam and Steve trying desperately to conquer the latest New York Times crossword in the corner while Natasha plays with Clint’s fingers under the table.

“Barton tells me you did pretty good on the stand.”

“For the time he was there,” Natasha says, taking a piece of garlic bread with her free hand. “He bolted halfway through.”

“No need to make me feel worse about it,” Clint mutters while rolling his eyes. She squeezes his palm underneath the table and he smiles because he knows that as little as three months ago, Natasha would’ve kept all kinds of physical affection private -- even the moments that could be easily hidden. Now, it’s almost like she’s reveling in the fact that everything about her is out in the world and screw it if she’s dating (sleeping) with someone who everyone thinks should be her partner and nothing more.

“So.” Tony leans back and sticks his legs on the table, and Clint sees Pepper suppress a frown as his ankles come to rest on what Clint assumes is a far too expensive piece of furniture, “am I to correctly assume you’ve now purged any and all keywords relating to ‘Black Widow’ from your social media?”

“You’ll be happy to know that I even deleted the application from my phone,” Natasha says, before pausing. “I guess it’s payback, considering I did the same thing to Clint after New York.”

“She blocked my YouTube account.”

“Because you wouldn’t stop watching those tourist videos from Germany, even when I yelled at you.”

“I didn’t even know you could _hack_ my account like that. I think I’m still banned.”

“Hey, does anyone know the answer to _1995 crime caper based on an Elmore Leonard novel_?" Sam calls from somewhere behind them, and then Tony’s yelling something about being frozen for 70 years and _really, we’re going there again, Stark?_ Natasha looks at Clint again and locks their hands together.

 _Maybe._ He focuses on her face over the chatter of their friends, and runs his thumb over the back of her palm.

_Maybe we’ll be okay._

 

***

 

In the end, they do backtrack to the farm.

It’s not the end-all-be-all of their destination, and Clint thinks he knows that as much as she does. But they need a destination and can’t decide on options that don’t involve an airport or a boat -- two things Natasha is adamant about avoiding, because a cruise feels like she’s forgetting and Johannesburg feels like she’s running away. And so after too many bagels and too much coffee, Clint gets back in the car and drives five hours until Natasha takes over at a rest stop outside of D.C.

(First, though, a stop at his apartment in Bed Stuy to pick up some extra clothing and an overflowing collection of coffee mugs.)

They’re passing through Ohio, six miles out from the border with Natasha refusing to sit straight in her seat anymore when Clint switches the radio onto NPR Now’s Sirius XM station, and the mention of her name startles him more than he expects it to.

 

 

_“Can you talk a little bit about your thoughts on the Black Widow trial?”_

_“Well, as part of the jury, I can certainly speak to the things that went on behind the scenes. But I don’t think any of us have any clue what really happened there. I think we’ll be talking about this for years to come.”_

_“Quite honestly, I’m interested in the charges. I’m surprised at how quickly the jury dismissed them...wasn’t there a lot of controversy about all the damage she’s done?”_

_“Certainly. I think there’s a lot to be said, Tom, about the way our government handles situations like this. If our crimes can be dismissed for just saving people, who’s to say that a serial killer can’t go free because they had a past history of saving kids from a fire? If the Black Widow isn’t a national crisis, then what is?”_

 

 

Clint reaches for the button on the dashboard but Natasha gets there first, pushing his hand away with incredible strength.

“No,” and her voice is sharp over the conversation filtering through the speakers. “Leave it.”

They drive through the rest of the state and he lets himself zone out as the host continues to push at invasive-type questions that are answered with the same kind of blunt force, and he unconsciously allows the words to bleed into his mind.

 

***

 

The diner that they stop at is small, the last legitimate establishment that borders the town of Waverly, and it has a sleepy-looking atmosphere that gives off a vibe of having not changed since the 1970’s. Clint’s pretty sure it hasn’t and given that they’re about 50 miles out from the farm, there are less triggering places he would’ve preferred to stop at than somewhere close to the heart of his not-so-idealistic childhood. But no matter how close the end is, Natasha has put her foot down on driving any further on empty stomachs.

“And we’re not doing drive-through,” she had declared moodily when his eyes strayed to the numerous signs for Midwestern roadside grub.

They enter the restaurant, Clint moving languidly in the aftermath of being locked away in a car for so long and Natasha pulling up the rear as she stretches her legs. It’s quiet and calm, strains of overplayed pop music just barely discernible, so when the woman behind the hostess stand breaks the silence of the otherwise paltry-filled diner, he feels his stomach drop.

“Oh my god.”

Clint stops mid-step and Natasha edges up behind him.

“Oh my god, you’re --”

Clint shoots a look at the girl, who he figures can’t be more than twenty -- if not younger, given that he knows the town’s penchant of employing teenagers so that they can learn responsibility before they can walk. She immediately cuts herself off and Clint doesn’t miss the blush that rises up in her cheeks.

“Sorry. It’s, uh. Well, it’s my first day on the job actually, and…” She trails off, fumbling with the stack of over-sized menus, peering around them as if she’s waiting for an entire brigade of superheroes to show up -- or maybe, Clint thinks bitterly, an angry mob.

“Just the two of you?”

“Yes,” Natasha says, speaking up and curling her hand into Clint’s own. “Just us.”

The girl -- Ann Marie, Clint notes as he glances at her skewed name tag -- nods and gathers a few napkins, puttering her way down the aisle as she motions towards a table in the back. Natasha smiles in silent thanks and Clint keeps his eyes on her body language as he moves into the seat across from her.

“I, uh. I read about it, you know,” Ann Marie says suddenly, and her voice drops. “The trial.”

“I’m sure you did,” Natasha says levelly, glancing down at laminated pages as Ann Marie shuffles her feet.

“Yeah.” She looks up, shifting her gaze between them, and Natasha raises an eyebrow. “It’s just...well, it must’ve sucked, right? Being up there? All that attention? Waiting for the verdict?”

A few people at nearby tables start to move their heads, their attention turned from eggs and bacon, some shooting curious gazes in her direction and there’s at least one darkened glare that Clint’s eagle-eyes can pick out from the man sitting diagonal to their booth. He feels himself start to twitch, because there’s something about the entire exchange that unsettles him. As someone who generally worked behind the scenes to do a job that wasn’t overly visible in the same way that Tony and Steve were, it had been hard enough to feel comfortable living his life in the public after New York. But Waverly was practically in the middle of damn nowhere; they were miles from a real population. It was, more or less, a form of isolation from the world that knew them as heroes and assassins and saviors. And if news had spread so far that it could reach the shit-ends of the Midwest, well...

“It wasn’t fun,” and he’s brought out of his haze with Natasha’s voice. “But it’s over, now. I appreciate your concern.”

Clint recognizes the tone, still gentle and non-threatening but clearly a signal to end their conversation, and wonders if Ann Marie, for all her diner smarts, will be able to pick up the same signals. To his relief, she does, turning on her heel, before stopping halfway to the coffee maker. Her head swivels, and when she speaks again, she sounds a little hesitant, like she’s afraid to say the words out loud.

“Just so you know, uh. I always did believe you.”

 

 

 **AnnMarieVanKamp** @AnnMarieMarie • 1h  
Ummm….so #BlackWidow totally just came in and ate at my diner. I’d say that’s a decent first day on the job.

 **CAP’S AMERICAN GIRL** @colorsandlight • 1h  
omg i want details!! was she alone?? did she have someone with her??

 **AnnMarieVanKamp** @AnnMarieMarie • 1h  
Haha. Yeah, she had the guy with her. The archer that came to the trial. He’s cute lol. No idea where Cap America is!!

 **CAP’S AMERICAN GIRL** @colorsandlight • 1h  
forget cap now i am all about that falcon guy. let me know if he shows up i will ditch school haha.

 **AnnMarieVanKamp**  @AnnMarieMarie • 1h  
LOL you gonna change your twitter name now? ;)

 

 **Kate Bishop** @KateBishop  
Um, they let me talk about the Black Widow trial for ThinkProgress, okay? Read it here: thkpr.gs/7940284

 **America Chavez** , **Billy Kaplan** and five others favorited your Tweet                 _5m_

 

**Dissecting The Black Widow Trial**

##### BY **KATE BISHOP** @KateBishop POSTED ON May 30, 2014 AT 5:20 PM

I was asked to share my thoughts on the Black Widow trial not as a political correspondent and not as someone with government background, but as a personal voice.

(I mean, look, I’m like, totally the wrong person to write this, but I’ve been told that this is what they want, so I’m just going to hope people edit this accordingly and that I don’t sound too dumb.)

I don’t think a lot of people know what it’s like for those of us who are constantly in the spotlight, and what happens when we’re forced to undergo such scrutiny. Yes, we’re superheroes. Yes, we do cool things and some of us have a lot of money. But we’re not indestructible. We’re human and we have lives just like everyone else. We mess up and we make mistakes as much as we save the world and do good for others.

If you think we’re not different, consider this: my “superhero” friends and I sat on a couch and watched someone we know -- someone we actually know, someone we have fought with and laughed with -- get grilled by people who had no idea what they were talking about. What if someone put you on the stand because they dug up some crimes you committed when you were 18? Would you feel the same way? The Black Widow was targeted because she was an anomaly, and because she was a woman in a world of saviors that are mostly men. Ask yourself why she was the face of this mess when the person who society expected to be responsible wasn’t? Was it because he skipped town or because he was laid up in a hospital bed? Nope. It was because she took the fall and stood up for herself. Because she wasn’t afraid. Because she realized that she needed to own up to her mistakes. And for doing that -- for being responsible -- she was punished in a way that likely no one will forget anytime soon.

The point is, we’re all guilty of things in our past. But what Black Widow did took courage and strength, and it’s something we can only hope to achieve. I want to be more like her, and I know the rest of my team feels the same way.

If that makes me what they want to call a “bad superhero?” Well, you can find someone else to save the world.

 

 

The corners of the sky are starting to steal the last rays of daylight when Clint pulls the car onto the long road that leads up to the farm. They’ll rest here, at least, figure out how to pick up the remaining pieces of themselves and their world in the place that’s always been most sacred to them and their own struggles. That thought settles him slightly, and calms a mind that he knows has been restless since they left the diner under the guise of smiles and take-out (and, thanks to Natasha, a very generous tip.)

“You wanna shower first?” Clint asks as he kills the engine, eyeing the way the back of her hair seems to be stuck to her neck. She nods gratefully and he tosses her the house keys in response, not waiting for a verbal answer.

“Don’t bother with the chores,” she says before she opens the door and he gives himself a moment to sit in the resulting silence before following. Clint obeys her requests for the most part -- he walks around the barely-there crops and makes sure nothing is really out of place -- and by the time he’s stuck the leftover food in the fridge and made it upstairs, she’s already out of the shower, toweling her hair.

“Thinking of cutting it,” she says as he enters, slipping one of his shirts over her head. “Practical reasons and all. I can’t stand it getting so tangled all the time.” Clint nods, watching as she runs her fingers through a messy collection of curls.

“Would be nice to go back to that.”

He isn’t sure what he means by his remark because it feels like he’s trying to tell her that he wants to return to a time that he knows can probably never exist again -- not that he misses her hair at a shorter length. When Natasha frowns, he knows he hasn’t been as subtle with his words as he’s hoped.

“Come on,” she says, grabbing a pair of jeans and re-dressing herself fully. She reaches for his hand, leading him back down the stairs, and given that he hasn’t yet bothered to remove his jacket or boots, he doesn’t protest when she yanks open the screen door, walking them both outside.

“Wait,” he says when he realizes where they’re heading. She stops, breaking their grip, and he nods towards the barn.

“Come around the back with me.”

Natasha eyes him warily but follows as he starts to veer off the straight path they’ve been following, until Clint has her standing in front of a long, rickety ladder that climbs up the side of the barn walls. Natasha glances up and then turns her gaze back to him.

“Seriously?”

Clint shrugs and grabs onto one of the bars as he hoists himself up in a manner that feels far too easy. “What? You don’t trust me?”

“Trust has nothing to do with my faith in you,” Natasha says as she puts her hand on a rung just below him. “And everything to do with the fact that if I fall and break my neck, you are definitely using your S.H.I.E.L.D. savings to put me through a hospital stay.”

Clint finds himself smiling as he pulls himself up another few steps. “Barney and I used to climb up here all the time. Even came up here once after a tornado, just to see if this thing would hold out.” His smile drops slightly. “Our dad hated it.”

“That’s not surprising,” Natasha says from somewhere behind him, her words carefully dipped in something resembling understanding and also sympathy; his past, he knows, is a subject that tends to be off limits for both of them unless something specific brings it up. Clint crawls onto the top of the roof and dangles one hand over the edge to help her over the last step, then stretches out onto his back.

“Ask me,” she says when she’s mirrored his position and he lets out a long breath, feeling the tension dissipate from his limbs as it releases itself into the open landscape. If she’s asking this way -- without pretense and without beating around the bush -- he knows it means that she’s not going to berate him for it.

“Do you worry?”

Natasha raises one arm, tracing invisible, swirling shapes in the air. “Of course,” she says after awhile. “I’d be a fool not to. What I did will follow me for awhile.” She pauses, dropping her hand. “But that’s what my past did. It’s just...no one except you ever knew about it, really. Until now.”

Clint bites down on his tongue. “They’ll still talk about you,” he says, thinking of the diner. “Everywhere. On every radio station; on every goddamn comedy sketch.”

“Yes,” Natasha agrees with her own small sigh. “That’s what the world does, Clint. It takes us for who we are and it...it twists us into something else. For someone else’s amusement and enjoyment. We’ve always been puppets like that.”

“I guess.” His mind hinges on circus days and orphanages and missions and assignments that he’d rather forget and she fits herself against him almost instantly, her head finding its usual place underneath his chin. The feeling is comfortable, like another sense of home, and makes him remember the first time they let themselves get close like this -- the first time he felt the walls of her past crack just enough so that he could use his own trust to punch through the shattered remains.

“We’ll be okay,” Natasha confirms as she turns her head forward and, as he walks his own eyes towards the sky, endless and vast, he finds himself thinking that for the first time in awhile, he can believe both of their sentiments.

“Yeah. We will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has left encouraging comments and feedback. This was something that I was super nervous to put into the world and the fact that I got such positive responses means a lot. Special thank you to **geckoholic** and **bobsessive** for beta, brainstorm, and for the many instances of fear soothing I made them endure. I couldn't have done this without you.
> 
> Comments and kudos appreciated, come find me on [tumblr](isjustprogress.tumblr.com) if you're so inclined.


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